Profiling Cognitive Impairment in Mild COVID-19 Patients: A Case-Control Study at a Secondary Healthcare Centre in the Hilly Region of North India.

Abstract

COVID-19 pandemic continues to be a serious threat to humanity even after the last 2.5 years and multiple reported waves. Post-COVID-19 cognitive impairment has a detrimental effect on the quality of life, education, occupation, psychosocial as well as adaptive functioning and independence. Profiling the cognitive impairment in the mild COVID-19 recovered patients. Interview-based case-control study. This study was conducted at a secondary healthcare center in a hilly region of north India. Group A included mild COVID-19 recovered patients and Group B included local non-COVID healthy individuals. Both groups of participants were interviewed using Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA) to identify global and domain-wise cognitive impairment. Descriptive statistics were used to analyze the demographic and clinical variables. The Chi-square test was used to evaluate these results and statistical analysis was done using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (version 23) program. A total of 284 individuals were enrolled in our study, equally split into Groups A (cases) and B (controls). No global cognitive decline was found in any participant. However, 40 cases scored low on MoCA. The decrease in domain-wise cognitive function was statistically significant for visuospatial skill/executive function and attention. Our results have demonstrated that there is domain-wise cognitive impairment associated with mild COVID-19 disease. We recommend lowering the threshold of the MoCA to identify the early cognitive impairment and the inclusion of detailed cognitive assessment in post-COVID-19 follow-ups to initiate early cognitive rehabilitation among these patients.